Mahl, D., Kessler, S. H., Schäfer, M. S., Jobin, A., Zeng, J., & Georgi, F. (2026). Conspiracy theories and misinformation in digital media: An international expert assessment of challenges, trends, and interventions. Communications, 51, 233–258. https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2024-0123
Summary
This paper reports a three-wave Delphi study convening 47 international scholars and practitioners to produce an integrative, anticipatory impact assessment of conspiracy theories and misinformation in digital media. Rather than another siloed, present-focused, or Western-centric study, it aims to map current challenges, anticipate problematic trends over the coming five to ten years, and develop tailored interventions across a ten-area taxonomy spanning macro, meso, and micro levels. Its central argument is that there is “no silver bullet”: effective mitigation demands coordinated action across civil society, journalism, platforms, politics, and science, not isolated individual-level fixes. The authors also treat conspiracy theories and misinformation as conceptually distinct but practically intertwined phenomena best analysed together.
Key Contributions
- One of the first integrative, multi-perspectival, and anticipatory impact assessments of conspiracy theories and misinformation that crosses disciplinary, stakeholder, and societal-level boundaries.
- A structured ten-area taxonomy linking current challenges, anticipated trends, and tailored interventions.
- Surfaces underexplored issues: user strategies to circumvent moderation, the “Uberization” of journalism, demand-side dynamics for deceptive content, and the rise of cynical nihilism.
- Demonstrates the value and limits of combining Classic and Group Delphi designs for fast-moving information-environment topics.
- Generates actionable, context-sensitive policy recommendations, including DACH-specific strategies.
Methods
A three-wave Delphi study (May–September 2022). Waves 1 and 2 used a Classic Delphi design via anonymous online surveys: Wave 1 posed open-ended exploratory questions; Wave 2 used 4-point Likert ratings to prioritise challenges and interventions. Wave 3 was a Group Delphi — a two-day on-site workshop with rotating focus groups centred on the DACH region. Multi-stage sampling combined purposive snowball and maximum-variation strategies: 120 experts invited, 47 completing Wave 1 (38 scholars, 9 practitioners), 26 in Wave 2, and 9 in the workshop, spanning 13 countries and multiple disciplines and practitioner roles. Analysis used inductive-iterative thematic coding in MAXQDA and descriptive quantitative analysis in R.
Findings
- Ten thematic areas: governance of platforms, governance by platforms, platform design, journalism/news media ecosystems, research/science communication ecosystems, societal dynamics, socio-political institutions, individual behavior, prebunking/literacy, and debunking/fact-checking.
- 47% of experts expect the situation to worsen, 43% expect no change, only 11% expect improvement.
- Key current challenges: weak platform regulation, opaque algorithmic curation, clickbait journalism, limited researcher access to platform data, eroding institutional trust, and polarization.
- Anticipated trends: deepfakes, burner accounts, circumvention of moderation via subcultural language, “Uberization” of journalism, growing distrust in science, populism, and a shift from misinformed citizens to uninformed cynics and nihilists.
- Highest-rated intervention areas: governance of platforms (M=3.50) and journalism/news media ecosystems (M=3.50), then societal dynamics (3.38); debunking/fact-checking rated lowest (3.04).
- Notably, generative AI’s impact on misinformation was not anticipated by experts in 2022.
Connections
This assessment’s emphasis on platform data access as a key bottleneck connects directly to work on that theme, such as Rieder2025-ju and Bruns2026-yv. Its prioritisation of individual-level interventions — prebunking, literacy, and inoculation — relative to structural fixes engages debates carried in van-der-Linden2026-jt, Lewandowsky2026-ob, and Spampatti2026-kx, while its treatment of conspiracy-theory and misinformation subcultures and moderation circumvention resonates with Marwick2026-qd and Frischlich2025-vn.
Podcast
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